Ecological Borderlands

Body, Nature, and Spirit in Chicana Feminism

Awards and Recognition:

National Women's Studies Association/University of Illinois Press First Book Prize, 2013

Chicana feminists and their coalitions with human, nature, and spirit others

Environmental practices among Mexican American woman have spurred a reconsideration of ecofeminism among Chicana feminists. Christina Holmes examines ecological themes across the arts, Chicana activism, and direct action groups to reveal how Chicanas can craft alternative models for ecofeminist processes.

Holmes revisits key debates to analyze issues surrounding embodiment, women's connections to nature, and spirituality's role in ecofeminist philosophy and practice. By doing so, she challenges Chicanas to escape the narrow frameworks of the past in favor of an inclusive model of environmental feminism that alleviates Western biases. Holmes uses readings of theory, elaborations of ecological narratives in Chicana cultural productions, histories of human and environmental rights struggles in the Southwest, and a description of an activist exemplar to underscore the importance of living with decolonializing feminist commitment in body, nature, and spirit.

A bold excursion into a marginalized field, Ecological Borderlands demonstrates how Chicana feminists have actively and materially stretched themselves into coalitions with human, nature, and spirit others, and these acts underscore the role of agency in Chicana ecofeminist work.

"Holmes offers us new ways to consider what she calls performative ecological intersubjectivities that emerge from Chicana and Mexican American women's creative thinking, art-making, and spirituality, as well as from their commitments to social and ecological justice."--Irene Lara, coeditor of Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women's Lives

"This brilliant, accessible, and complex intervention should be read not just by those interested in environmentalism and feminism, but by all transnational, decolonizing, and materialist thinkers and doers, whether scholars, students, or activists."--Noel Sturgeon, author of Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural

Christina Holmes is an assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at DePauw University.

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